Though it remains difficult to express, our perception of pain is keen and intimate. Our inner and unspoken vocabulary of pain abounds with the subtlety of color, pitch, aroma, texture, and taste. While we frequently categorize pain as merely a sub-group of the sense of touch, it stands much more prominent. In reality, pain more properly deserves recognition as a sixth sense– or, perhaps because of its overwhelming intensity, we should classify it the first.
When pain comes to visit we attempt to avoid it– sometimes, at all costs. Advertising in Western culture consumes billions of dollars with the intent to sell us the latest and greatest analgesic (read: "pain-killer"). From the acupuncture of millennia ago, to today's Advil, Nexium, and Preparation H, we are not as concerned with preventing the pain, as we are with alleviating it ("Aleve"– now there's a catchy brand-name for you). And when the agony of late stage cancer has ravaged the body to the point where life no longer seems worth living, the final big-gun is brought out in the war: the opiate morphine.
I have walked my own path of living with chronic pain. Over a period of about seven years, what began as a minor ache in my lower, right back slowly, but steadily, grew in annoyance. It radiated farther and deeper, eventually extending as far as my foot, and toes. In the early years I attempted to ignore the pain, and refrained from mentioning it to others. In the final years of its progression, it became a throbbing, aching electric signal that overwhelmed nearly every other perception of life. I could not forget about the pain for a single minute of my waking hours. Every part of my existence submitted to the command of its incessant presence. Two unrelated innate malformations of my spinal column conspired to produce the miserable effect, and a medical solution did not present itself.
Pain also comes in modes beyond the mere physical. Emotional pain almost certainly trumps the power and prestige of that experienced by the body. While physical pain occasionally addicts a sufferer to some pain-relieving substance, emotional pain accounts for the vast majority of those desperately seeking daily relief in pain-blocking chemicals. Emotional distress, and its mental and spiritual henchmen, hit us on a very deep and foundational level, and we cannot easily assuage them. When the agony increases to the point of no return, the only remedy in sight appears to be self-destruction: suicide. Our culture now accepts this final urgent act as a reasonable response to the great difficulties of life.
We can all ask: "If there is a God, why does He allow pain? Why doesn't He just end it? Is He so sadistic that He enjoys watching us writhe in it?"
Although pain appears to us a demon of torment, it hovers in our lives as angelic protector and guardian of life. This unique ability, to perceive pain, is a precious gift from the hand of God. Threats, dangers, and pitfalls of every sort fill this utterly broken universe, in which we live and breathe and have our being. That which would harm us, even to the point of death, surrounds us. When we stepped out of the place of perfection, we stepped into a place of peril. In God's exceeding grace, He placed within us the ability to sense when harm stood at the door, so we might back away, or run away, from the jeopardy afoot. Pain is the inner alarm that calls out for our attention when a crisis is upon us.
When dangers attack, and we are not warned by the wailing siren of pain, they can work their destructive ways upon us, unhindered by any retreat from them. If pain ceased as our frequent and normal companion, ills of all sort would befall us, to our catastrophe.
In the twentieth-century, Dr. Paul Brand, a noted surgeon, medical educator, and pioneer of medical treatment for leprosy (Hansen's Disease), said this about the absence of pain:
"Ironically, I have spent half my life among people whose faces bear the same disfigurement of punishment and torment (as that caused by pain), but for the opposite reason. Leprosy patients suffer because they feel no pain; they yearn for the demons who would alert them to impending dangers." (from In His Image, Copyright, Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, 1984)The horrific ugliness of the effects of a life lived with leprosy, result from harm and damage not felt by their victim. Missing digits, ulcerated wounds on the face, and the complete loss of feet and limbs are payment for the absence of pain. We wish to avoid pain, and yet if we could, disaster would surely follow.
My older brother was recently a casualty of the absence of pain. His death a month ago came just a few weeks after his diagnosis with very late stage pancreatic cancer. We frequently hear of similar diagnoses given to those familiar to us as celebrities, as well as those in our closer circle, and the result always seems the same. In very short order, the disease consumes their entire body and soon claims their life. How can this disease be so virulent, and act so rapidly?
The answer most likely lies in the fact that pancreatic cancer, generally, gives no obvious warning signs– no clear symptomatic changes in function, no large masses bulging from the body, and no associated pain. The disease is not necessarily faster growing than other cancers, but by the time it is finally detected, it has already plundered and devastated the body's organs: the pancreas, the liver, the stomach, the lungs. My brother never seemed to be in pain, even in his final days. Pain might have been his salvation.
But in all of this, pain ultimately has an expiration date. When the current configuration of this universe draws to a close, its trials and dangers will end, and the cosmos will pass into a new and glorified state. The old order, with its disease and death "...and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to," will be no more and the new will arrive. Without the presence of disease and death, pain will have finally outlived its usefulness. This newness was bought with the hefty price of the pain and death of God's own Son. In that new place of perfection,
"...God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." (Revelation 21:4, KJV)
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>>> Unless otherwise attributed, all text and images are Copyright, Bill Brockmeier, 2015. All rights reserved.
Image is Edvard Munch's The Scream (tempera), 1910
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